I N C E P T I O N: Cookies

We interrupt our regularly scheduled healthy programming for some dessert. And probably diabetes.

My boyfriend Charlie just moved to San Francisco for a new job. While I had my family’s help moving from Michigan to Boston, he called up some movers for most of his things, packed the rest into his car, and drove west. While he waits for his moving truck to get there with his pots and pans and bowls and plates, he’s living off ramen noodles and Taco Bell. He’s not the sort of man who complains, but I know I’d have a decent-sized meltdown about not having any of my stuff and OH MY GOD I’M GOING TO BE FAT AND BROKE FROM EATING THIS WAY. I always feel like I need to fix things when they’re broken or make people smile when they are not, so I wanted to make his new apartment feel like home. Since I can’t be there to go to Ikea and Pier One and buy all sorts of pretend-fancy things, and a quiche won’t keep for the three days it’ll take to ship, I decided on cookies.

But I’ve graduated from your basic from-scratch chocolate cookie. Charlie and I have been together for almost seven years, but I still want the guy to think I’m the shit. I have to up the ante. I was (ironically) searching for healthy cookies, when I found a blog post about these beauties. Healthy went right out the window. There was no way I’d be able to resist the Inception of cookies: chocolate-chip cookies. Stuffed with Oreos. A cookie within a cookie.

The recipe went viral (how could it not?!?), and I read up on comments and suggestions, and decided to follow those of this blogger—halve the chocolate chips, so you can retain the taste of the cookies’ Oreo heart, and use Double-Stuf Oreos (for obvious reasons). I went to the store and gathered the ingredients to whip up a heart attack.

Weaponry. Both sticks of butter were required.

I got to use my new bowls, first creaming the butter and sugars (plural, both brown and white), adding vanilla and eggs, and then adding the dry ingredients. The recipe called for a full tablespoon of vanilla, which always makes the cookie dough irresistible. Charlie may have ended up with fewer cookies than I’d hoped to give him—I ate a staggering amount of the dough. Sometimes I think that’s almost better than the eating the cookie itself.

Next came the part of the recipe that any adult who’s not supposed to play with her food looks forward to: molding the dough around the Oreos. The recipe warned about using too much dough, making sure you pinch the edges completely, blah blah, but please—it’s cookie dough around ANOTHER COOKIE. You can do no wrong.

I used an ice cream scoop to measure out the dough, one scoop on either side. I sort of measured, trying to make sure I had enough dough to cover the Oreo each time—I didn’t want the Oreo to poke out and spoil the surprise, because what would the point be after that? After lining up all the cookies on a baking sheet, I began to have doubts about whether these would ever finish baking. They were MONSTROUS.

Oreo provided for size comparison.

I slid them into the oven and started to wait. I tried to clean up the kitchen while I waited, but I was useless because I had to stop every minute and check on the cookies like they were a dozen fussy babies. They were so gigantic I was afraid of them spreading out on the cookie sheet and becoming one massive chocolate-chip-Oreo-cookie monster that would become sentient and kill us all.

After nine minutes, they weren’t close to done. After thirteen minutes, they were no different. The recipe recommended 8-15 minutes, and after 15 minutes, my cookies were still gooey and I worried that I’d left out the baking soda or something else idiotic like that. I put them in for two more minutes and crossed my fingers.

They were an abomination to suggested serving sizes, but they were done. It was clear that I’d been way too overzealous with the cookie dough and not careful enough with the shaping—you’ll notice the appetizing tumor-like shape of some of them. For the second batch, I used much less dough and spread it thinner. They were still ridiculous, but a little less so.

I took a bite. Oreo, chocolate, vanilla, and oh goodness there aren’t really words. These are the kind of cookies that demand milk. I could only have one. Maybe ever. The problem is, they opened up a Pandora’s box of cookies stuffed with cookies stuffed with cookies… I had the sudden thought that these might be good baked in brownies, and maybe I could put the brownies inside some sort of cake, and I knew it was time to put the flour away and go to bed before things got out of control.